SAARC must be more relevant, says President Yameen

Speaking at the inauguration ceremony of the seventh Conference of the SAARC Speakers and Parliamentarians in Bandos Island Resort today, President Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom has said that the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) needs to increase its relevance and be more responsive to keep up with the expectations of the people of its member countries.

Multilateral cooperation among member states of SAARC is vital, the President said, especially in maintaining the region’s foothold on global politics and in international trade.

“To keep abreast with the expectations of our peoples, we need to increase the relevance of SAARC, both as a tool for multilateral cooperation among our member states, as well as in global politics and in international trade,” President Yameen said.

He noted that the seventh SAARC speakers and parliamentarians conference is the first international forum that the Maldives is hosting since the commencement of this new government’s tenure, and that it is especially fitting to host a SAARC gathering at this time, as the Maldives is the current Chair of the association.

The President said that having served in the parliament for almost two decades, he has a strong sense of kinship with the parliamentarians gathered at the ceremony and that he is keenly aware of the huge responsibilities entrusted upon the members of the legislatures by their people.

On a different note, President Yameen highlighted that the Maldives has seen the implementation of an ambitious package of constitutional, democratic reforms in the past decade, which had centered around drafting of the current Constitution of 2008, which established a number of new democratic institutions, while strengthening numerous existing ones.

In his inaugural address to the 17th SAARC Summit in Addu City in November 2011, former President Mohamed Nasheed had also called on SAARC leaders to deepen economic integration and build bridges of co-operation between their countries and people.